Being There Launch

During the finissage weekend of INFRActures, artist laurie halsey brown organized a bus tour through the city that will create a synthesis with the surrounding urban environment and heighten an awareness of the city's identity.

18

Dec 2005

15:00 to
17:00

location:
V2_Eendrachtsstraat 10, Rotterdam

Many Rotterdam architects tend to leave the city due to a shortage of local projects. Rotterdam profiles itself as a city of architecture but how does this image chime with everyday reality? Artist laurie halsey brown organizes during the finissage weekend of INFRActures a bus tour through the city that will create a synthesis with the surrounding urban environment and heighten an awareness of the city's identity.

This event also includes access to a public intervention project placed throughout the city, launch of net.art piece welkom 2 r'dam as well as stopping at two of the sites for 'architectural' food + a performance at one of the sites. beingthere.v2.r'dam.05 is an intra-disciplinary project which includes components that will also be shown after the launch event:

Localiteit en Identeit

is an experimental documentary that will be shown on the bus tour, and shown in the future in an installation format. It includes interviews with 25 local architects, politicians and academics and gives a compelling portrait of the past, present and future identity of the city of Rotterdam in 2005.

PUBLIC DOCUMENT

is a 30 min. experimental documentary that focuses on author/user dialogue in relation to the ten sites that are the focus of the bus tour.

welkom 2 r'dam

A net.art piece that uses the language and strategies of a tourist site, it is designed to 'promote' dialogue about Rotterdam identity; e-mails from the public will be uploaded in relation to public invention and launch.

Poster/Brochure + Public Intervention

Posters will be placed throughout the city to surround 10 locally built sites stating that 'the building was built by a local architect' and that r'dam has the largest quantity [and quality] of architects of any other city in the world but that very few of these architects build for the city. The poster asks the public to reflect on how this locality issue affects the city's identity and will connect with the net.art piece in which dialogue about the identity of the city will be uploaded. The poster becomes a brochure when folded: using the language and strategies of tourist materials, it creates a'visual map' of the identity of Rotterdam and includes interior and exterior images of locally built architecture: photographs by the artist, quotes from the architects and text by Dennis Kaspori.